The “rule of law” distinguishes democracies from dictatorships. It’s based on three fundamental principles. Trump is violating every one of them.
The first principle is that no person is above the law, not even a president. Which means a president cannot stop an investigation into his alleged illegal acts. Yet Trump has done everything he can to stop the Mueller investigation, even making Matthew Whitaker acting Attorney General – whose only distinction to date has been loud and public condemnation of that investigation.
The second principle is that a president cannot prosecute political opponents. Decisions about whom to prosecute for alleged criminal wrongdoing must be made by prosecutors who are independent of politics. Yet Trump has repeatedly pushed the Justice Department to bring charges against Hillary Clinton, his 2016 rival, for using a private email server when she was Secretary of State, in alleged violation of the Presidential Records Act.
The third principle is that a president must be respectful of the independence of the judiciary. Yet Trump has openly ridiculed judges who disagree with him in order to fuel public distrust of them.
He recently referred to the judge who halted Trump’s plan for refusing to consider asylum applications an “Obama judge,” and railed against the entire ninth circuit in which that judge serves. John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, condemned Trump’s attack. “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges,” Roberts said. An “independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”
Almost a half-century ago, I watched as another president violated these three basic principles of the rule of law, although not as blatantly as Trump. The nation rose up in outrage against Richard Nixon, who resigned before Congress impeached him. The question is whether this generation of Americans will have the strength and wisdom to do the same.
Losing Trust Worldwide
Trump’s confounding & calamitous leadership is hurting America’s reputation on the international stage. In these excerpts from america-falls-in-
At its highest point, the U.S. reached No. 17 in the trustworthiness ranking in 2016 — though the Best Countries rankings only took 60 countries into account at that time. In subsequent years, the nation lost ground, ranking No. 23 in 2017, No. 25 in 2018 and landing at No. 27 this year. The shift is the latest in global findings that suggest a diminishing standing for the U.S. among the world’s top nations. President Donald Trump’s leadership has proved polarizing from its start. A poll conducted as part of the 2017 U.S. News Best Countries study found more than 70 percent of survey respondents lost respect for U.S. leadership as a result of the toxic nature of the 2016 presidential election, while a more recent Pew Research Center study from October showed people still have less confidence in Trump than four other world leaders. And although members of the Trump administration have stressed America is globally respected, additional analyses have suggested international confidence in Trump is low. A weakened sense of trustworthiness was not cast over all of North America, however, with Canada taking the top spot for trustworthiness in the 2019 ranking. America’s neighbor to the north was followed by Switzerland, Denmark, New Zealand and Norway in the top five. At the bottom of the ranking, Ukraine landed No. 80 in trustworthiness, joined by Nigeria, Myanmar, Iraq and Lebanon in the bottom five.
Here’s Where We’re Seeing the Destructive Trump Hannity Duo Leading Our Country
Trump dares not make a move without insanity Hannity’s blessing, since all he cares about is keeping his base happy, because he’s practically given up on ever being President of the Unites States. The prez knows full well Hannity, Limbaugh & other echo-extremist lunatic fanatics have the ear of gullible Trumpeters, so Trump bends over backwards to cater to them & it’s having a very divisive/negative effect on America. In so many ways terrible decisions are being made at the highest levels of leadership, mostly by President Trump Hannity, one glaring example being these echo-heads talking the prez into this senseless government shutdown, as explained in these excerpts from trump-is-waiting-for-
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin said that the shutdown has lasted for so long in part because Trump is afraid to upset his right-wing base. Rubin cited the Morning Consult-Politico and CBS news polls to show that more and more Americans blame the president for the government shut down. “Even this White House, infamous for self-delusion, must realize it’s in deep trouble,” Rubin wrote. “Trump’s biggest cheerleaders in the right-wing media (e.g. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity) and his hardcore anti-immigrant adviser Stephen Miller who egged him on are now responsible for the worst political debacle of his presidency,” she said. She added, “He’s now trapped, waiting for a permission slip from the right-wing media chorus to capitulate — or watch his support and any hope for legislative accomplishments evaporate.” Trump has long boasted about his relationship with right-wing media. He contacted Limbaugh personally about the shutdown and admitted that he talks to Hannity on a regular basis.
More Signs of Bad Leadership from Presidents Trump Hannity Limbaugh Coulter etc. etc. etc.
It was these xenophobic crackpots that led the nation straight into this ridiculous shutdown in the first place. Now that the prez has folded, some echo-blabbermouths are fuming. Ann Coulter is one of the world’s biggest bigoted xenophobes, so naturally she would call Trump a “wimp” for caving. So we do see some cracks forming inside the devious echo world, which is a good thing since undermining their normally uniform narratives can help confuse the base. Of course, as we’ve seen that far-right base is mighty confused to begin with. See the echo-pushback Trump is getting inside pro-trump-media-stars-
Seemingly No End to the Trump Hannity Deceit
In more Trump Hannity connections where those two nudniks are totally in the tank for each other, check out examples of a total lack of journalistic ethics, as even opinion journalists are supposed to base their viewpoints on actual sources & facts. With Roger Stone arrested, there are signs which have come out that insanity Hannity may have been in the loop on the Stone-WikiLeaks exchanges, based on his crazy rants & conspiracies he often spreads on the air. You could search for these posts & videos from mediamatters/video/2019/
Plus click on fox-news-sean-hannity-
Republican senator involved in the immigration debate said President Donald Trump faced an impossible choice as the government shutdown lingers into a second month. The senator, who was not identified, told Axios that the president and his son-in-law’s efforts to end the shutdown with a compromise on immigration would alienate Trump’s most devoted supporters. One idea that has circulated over the past day in the White House and among congressional staffers is giving a path to green cards to the current 700,000 DACA recipients, according to three sources familiar with the conversations. White House adviser Jared Kushner has brought this idea, which has the support of Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and other GOP senators, back to the White House, but the unnamed Republican senator said that was a non-starter. “Trump can withstand Ann Coulter,” the senator said. “He can’t lose Hannity and the rest.” The GOP senator said Kushner “wants to go big” as he tries to negotiate an end to the 33-day shutdown, but he said “now’s not the time to go big.”
More on Trump Hannity Fox Echo Alliances
Always keep in mind over the din of all this Russia & echo-propaganda, which is often one in the same, the White House keeps bombarding us with similar rubbish talking points rubber-stamped by the echo, while Mueller’s team does not leak. So we keep hearing echo-spin without it being countered by the real evidence from special counsel. But Mueller will get the last word! So in the meantime, Fox fake news keeps bending over backwards in lying to their viewers, trying to concoct their own fairy-tale version the more naive might believe. In the wake of the headline Roger Stone arrested, they pass it off as no big deal & has nothing to do with Trump. Echo-world conveniently ignores the hordes of circumstantial evidence suggesting collusion, with Mueller most likely still sitting on the most damning evidence pointing directly at the prez, until the strategic point all the facts are collected & they have an airtight case. Only then can we learn the facts.
It’s a shame that Fox audience don’t seem discerning enough to see through all the lies, so the network just keeps lying to them. How Fox viewers can’t see through all that is beyond me. Other than some reasonable afternoon shows, the bamboozled fans who hang on every word spewing from Fox studios are apparently unaware of the destructive toxins emanating from the stinky pile of garbage they’re swallowing, which is basically akin to Kremlin propaganda & poses a direct threat to our constitutional democracy. With those bombshell headlines Friday morning about Roger Stone arrested, again we see how Fox fake news went into overdrive trying to distance the prez from that story as seen in Willfully-Blind-FOX-News-
Maybe I’m sounding fired up today, but we should all be sick & tired of the evil-echo deceiving millions of our fellow Americans! So as Trump constantly lies to us, now more than 8000 times during his presidency, Fox fake news not only allows him to get away with lying, but doubles down on those same lies! In doing so, the GOP has largely been corrupted & turned into the party of deception, virtually feckless as they’ve become subservient to their cult leader & his messaging echo. And the base just keeps rolling merrily along: without-fox-news-republicans-
Disinformation & the Misinformed Running Rampant Out There!
In addition to many show hosts & pundits on Fox fake news, there are so many other public figures out there who’ve proven conclusively to be Trumpian imbeciles: welcome-to-the-
Ted Cruz seemed on the verge of tears today as he discussed the fact that first responders had been furloughed during the partial government shut down. And Senator Michael Bennet took him to task for it in an impassioned speech that pointed out Cruz’s past support for federal shutdowns during the Obama administration. “These crocodile tears that the Senator from Texas is crying for first responders are too hard for me to take,” Bennet said. “They’re too hard for me to take because when the Senator from Texas shut this government in 2013 my state was flooded.” The senator went on to remind Cruz and his assembled colleagues that people were killed during those floods in Colorado. As Vox notes, in 2013, Republicans insisted that the spending bill for the next fiscal period should delay the implementation of the Affordable Health Care Act. Cruz was a key supporter of this move that led to the government being shut down for 17 days. The current shutdown is the longest one on record and has lasted more than a month. In a raised voice, that bellowed with what sounded like exasperation and/or anger, the senator from Colorado ripped President Trump for using the border wall to force the government into a partial shutdown. “Which goes to my final point, how ludicrous it is that this government is shut down over a promise the president of the United States couldn’t keep. And that America is not interested in having him keep,” he shouted.
Yep, radical terrorism is radical terrorism, no matter where the extremist evil ideology is bred from. See excerpts from right-wing-terrorists-
Every terrorist murder in the US last year was linked to right-wing extremism, according to a new report. At least 50 people were killed by an attacker connected to right-wing extremism in 2018, an increase of 35 per cent from the previous year, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) found. The rise means nearly three-quarters of extremist murders in America in the past decade can be linked to right-wing domestic terrorism, more than three times as many as those committed by Islamists. The figures should “serve as a wake-up call to everyone about the deadly consequences of hateful rhetoric,” said the ADL, a New York-based organisation with monitors antisemitism and other hate crime. “It’s time for our nation’s leaders to appropriately recognise the severity of the threat and to devote the necessary resources to address the scourge of right-wing extremism,” said chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt.
According to the ADL’s calculation, last year was the deadliest for right-wing extremist murders in the US since 1995, when Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people in the Oklahoma City bombing. When all forms of extremism are taken into account, 2018 was the fourth deadliest for domestic terrorism in America since 1970, the ADL said. The rise can partly be attributed to the high casualty numbers in five mass shootings which accounted for 38 of the 50 deaths last year. However, the percentage of extremist deaths linked to right-wing ideologies has also surged in the past two years. In 2017, 62 per cent of extremist murders were committed by ring-wing killers. That figure was itself up from 21 per cent in 2016, according to the ADL, which said the increase reflected a long-term trend. In the past decade, 73.3 per cent of all extremist-related killings in the US were committed by right-wing domestic extremists. Some 23.4 per cent were linked to Islamic extremism.
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